It was created in 1287 by Gilbert de Clare, the Earl of Gloucester, following a boundary dispute with Thomas de Cantilupe, the Bishop of Hereford.
The Chase was owned by the Earl of Gloucester until it passed to King John by his marriage to Gloucester's daughter, Avisa.
Subsequently the manor passed to the Earls of Gloucester, in whose family it stayed until the 4th Earl of Gloucester died without a successor in 1314.
Through these sons Gilbert was ancestor of the English house of de Clare, of the Barons FitzWalter, and the Earls of Gloucester (see Earl of Gloucester) and Hertford (see Earl of Hertford).
His eldest daughter Mabel inherited his great estates and married Robert, 1st Earl of Gloucester around 1107.
•
Rhys's daughter Nest became the mistress of King Henry I of England and allegedly was mother of Robert, 1st Earl of Gloucester who married Mabel, Fitzhamon's daughter and heiress and thus had legitimacy both among the Welsh and the Norman barons.
•
Fitzhamon's Gloucestershire property thus became the nucleus of the Earldom of Gloucester later given to his son-in-law.
Gloucester | James Earl Jones | Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex | Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma | Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener | Earl | Frederick Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts | Earl of Derby | Earl Warren | Earl of Pembroke | Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer | Earl of Warwick | Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford | Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby | Earl of Shrewsbury | William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham | Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester | Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester | Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick | Earl of Leicester | John Scott, 1st Earl of Eldon | Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex | Robert, 1st Earl of Gloucester | Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer | Earl of Devon | Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig | My Name Is Earl | Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon | Earl Scruggs | Earl of March |
Another branch of the Audley family was created by Hugh Audley of Stratton Audley, Baron Audley from 1317, whose son became 1st Earl of Gloucester.
The Norman family who took the name 'de Clare' became associated with the peerage as they held, at differing times, three earldoms (Gloucester, Pembroke, and Hertford).
At the close of a week, William prevailed on Robert to surrender, and within a fortnight of his surprising the castle he had lost it and had set out to join the Earl of Gloucester.
It had "two courts, and in the north-west part of the outer court there is a large keep with a dungeon, said to have been built of stone brought by the red Earl of Gloucester from Caen in Normandy. In the other court is an attractive church and many domestic quarters, with a great gate on the south side, a stone bridge and three ramparts on the left bank leading to the mouth of the Frome. Many towers still stand in both the courts, but they are all on the point of collapse.".
The most detailed account of the Earl of Gloucester's death at the Battle of Bannockburn is the chronicle Vita Edwardi Secundi.
He played the Earl of Gloucester in the Donmar Theatre production of King Lear with Derek Jacobi, Maurice Montgomery in Nicholas Wright's Travelling Light at the National Theatre and appeared in Caryl Churchill's Love and Information at the Royal Court (2012).